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bbianca127 writes “In November, California will be voting on Proposition 37. The proposition would mandate putting labels on foods that have been genetically modified. While supporters of the proposition think that consumers deserve to know what they’re eating, opponents call it ‘anti-science’ and have donated $25 million to defeating the measure. From the article: ‘Unsurprisingly, the battle has gotten very expensive, very quickly. Agribusinesses and food manufacturers have donated a total of $13 million toward defeating the measure, bringing the total up to $25 million in the coffers of those proposing the proposition. In comparison, the organic farmers and environmentalists who support the proposition have managed to raise less than a tenth of that total amount.’”

As of February 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) had allocated all remaining public IP address ranges to the five global regional Internet registries. A quick look at this IPv4 Exhaustion Counter below shows a total of 13.24 /8 (8-bit) IPv4 address ranges remaining, for a total of less than 3,400 remaining unallocated IPv4 addresses. Essentially, this means
IPv4 is played out.

How to Prepare for IPv6 Networking explains the benefits of IPv6 (it’s not just more addresses), what’s needed to support IPv6 and a case study for IPv6 setup. If you’re not acquainted with IPv6 yet, it’s time to get started.

Mega funds are back. Accel Partners closed two funds today for a total of $1.35 billion in new capital. The funds are Accel XI, which raised $475 million, and Accel Growth Fund II, which raised $875 million.

It took less than two months to raise the $1.35 billion. The fundraising kicked off on April 26, 2011.The firm’s last fund, Accel X, was a $520 million fund and closed in 2007

The additional capital will be used to step up development of its D’Fusion software platform and to expand operations in Asia and the United States, grow its community of developers and explore new consumer markets.

Founded in 1999, Total Immersion provides a commercial augmented reality platform that enables developers to blurs the line between the virtual and the real world by integrating realtime interactive 3D graphics into live video streams. See demo video below.

Intel says it will work together with Total Immersion to develop new usage experiences for its own platforms. It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time the chip maker’s venture capital arm invests in an augmented reality software company – it also took the lead in a $14 million financing round for Layar announced back in November 2010.

FleaPlus writes “NASA is spending a total of $475,000, split between Masten Space Systems and John Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace, for a series of seven test flights of the companies’ reusable suborbital rockets over the next several months, going to altitudes as high as 25 miles. NASA’s goal is to foster a more cost-effective and flexible way to conduct microgravity and upper-atmosphere research. Jeff Bezos’s suborbital spaceflight company Blue Origin has also been making steady progress this year on their $3.7M contract to test pusher-escape system and composite pressure vessel technologies, which NASA is interested in for orbital spaceflight.”

Hodejo1 writes “In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units. This number supported, through advertising, three national television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS (a fourth, Dumont, folded in 1956) and numerous local independent stations. Now here are another set of numbers. As of April this year Apple sold 75 million iPhone and iPod touch units, devices capable of delivering video via Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Add to that figure 2 million iPads and counting. By the end of the year Apple should have about 90 million smart mobile devices in the wild. That makes a proprietary amalgam greater than what the TV networks had in 1959 and one that easily serves as a foundation for a pending broadcast network that will be delivered not through tall radio towers, but through small wireless hubs and the Internet. Call it the Apple Broadcast Network. iAd is how Apple plans to pay for it.”